Affiliate Marketing Course vs Self Learning

Special Announcement:It’s my pleasure to introduce you to my very first guest poster – Ibrahim Dahy. Please see his bio at the bottom of this post as well as a link to his site. As someone who is interested in affiliate marketing I know you’ll get a lot from this post.

And that’s just the basics because there is a lot more to learn before you can become a profit generating affiliate marketer.

There are a lot of resources online you can use to learn affiliate marketing, like from affiliate blogs or affiliate marketing courses. Both of those resources can equip you with the required skills but they vary in the depth they offer in their training.

In this article we are going to compare learning from affiliate blogs vs. learning from affiliate marketing training courses.

Affiliate Niche Finding

Since finding a niche to promote affiliate products is the first step of becoming an affiliate, we are going to start with it first.

Finding a niche involves skills like: • Detecting profitable niches • Detecting high demand niches A profitable niche is the one that has high paying affiliate products and a blog post that can show you the techniques to find them will certainly help you find your own niches.

For example, if you look at Clickbank’s products marketplace, you will see the affiliate commission listed next to each product.

Any good blog post can go into details of how to pick one product above the other, considering not only your affiliate commission but also the product reputation.

But the fact is, you need to learn how to judge niches from using multiple affiliate networks and not only using Clickbank.

A blog post no matter how good it is, cannot walk you through the top affiliate networks and at the same time teach you the skill of detecting a money niche vs. free niche.

And here is where an affiliate marketing course can help you more as it would go into more details on how to use advertiser’s data to judge the niche profitability, and even use the niche competition as a judging factor on how profitable it is.

Same can be said on detecting high demand niche, as you would need to read many blog posts on dedicating niche’s demand.

Not to mention that it is hard to find more than a handful of posts that will soley focus on the techniques of finding high demand niches.

A high demand niche can be detected using many methods like: the monthly search data for a set of keywords related to the niche and also using suppliers number (product vendors), because the more products in the niche mean the more client base there is.

An extra step that a good affiliate marketing course can go is to provide you with a tool to automate finding your niche or at least semi automate it.

Affiliate Website Design

Your affiliate website is the bridge between the buyer and the product, and therefore it has to reflect the quality of the product you are promoting.

Most of the blog posts talking about web design will be technical because web design itself is done using tools.

So affiliate blogs will either recommend you a good website theme or provide you with a free theme along with a guide on how to customize it to your needs.

Affiliate marketing course on the other hand can provide students with a web design tools to create affiliate review pages or squeeze pages.

Also there are some graphics elements that website themes can’t provide, like scribbles, arrows, headlines designer.

Unless you have a budget to hire your own web designer or buy a website theme, you need to find an affiliate marketing course that can provide you with the tools to create all this yourself.

Finding Affiliate Products

There are many blog poststhat can show you how and where to find affiliate products with high commission, even providing you with a list of high paying niches that only offer high paying products (like the luxury items niche).

The basic factors you should consider when picking your affiliate product are:

The commission per sale

Product credibility and brand popularity

Product’s sales history and refund rates

A good affiliate blog will help you judge a product based on these factors.

Giving how you only need 1 or 2 products to start with, you will find that affiliate blogs teach you everything you need.

Even reading case studies on affiliates who promoted certain products and generated sales can give you guidelines on the certiria used by the affiliate to pick that product.

Sometimes you even don’t need to learn about finding affiliate products, because you can simply pick few popular products in your niche and promote them on your affiliate website.

If you are looking to escape the affiliate competition that comes with any popular product, then you need an affiliate marketing coursethat offers a tool to find products in bulk and at the same time compare their commission and their reputation.

Writing Your Affiliate Product Review

A converting product review needs to be written well which is not as easy as you might think, because you need to consider:

The Grammar

Your Spelling

Copywriting Skills

You need to read many blog postsabout copywriting and not necessarily from affiliate blogs, because copywriting is not just limited to affiliate marketing.

Also read about how to structure your product review, in the sense that you need to know which keywords to highlight and where to put screenshots and videos.

Beside these basics, you can simply go to any product review and see how the affiliate structured it and what elements he used. You can learn a lot from other’s experience if you pay attention to details.

I don’t think an affiliate marketing coursecan provide you with more value than affiliate blogs.

That’s because the majority of your review page will consist of:

Testimonials

Screenshots

Videos

Product benefits

All which you can collect manually using common sense.

However, if your affiliate marketing course provides you with tools to automatically search for those elements or at least shows you how to search for them, then it will save you the extra effort.

Getting Traffic to Your Affiliate Website

Traffic is the trickiest part of being an affiliate. Many affiliates will fail or succeed based soley on their ability to generate traffic to their website.

With the vast traffic sources that exists online, be that as free or paid traffic, it is hard to find a blog or an affiliate marketing course that can cover all of them.

However you can move from blog to another trying to learn about different traffic generation techniques and you can start by learning about:

SEO

Social Media Traffic

Pay Per Click Ads

You then start implementing those different techniques until you find the one that works for you.

However, what makes an affiliate marketing course your best bet when it comes to traffic is that most courses provided by top affiliate gurus already perfected various traffic generation methods.

They then teach you step by step, how to implement those methods on your affiliate website.

This is especially in the case of paid traffic like PPC, because it is easy to come up with a proven system to launch a paid traffic campaign while at the same time improving your targeting and your ad copywriting skills.

Conclusion

As you can see, there is no absolute need to enroll in an affiliate marketing course, because the number of affiliate marketing blogs out there are sufficient to rely on.

A well put affiliate marketing coursecan however organize everything for you, and take you step by step through the various affiliate marketing stages. And if it comes with tools then it will help you even more.

Guest Poster Bio Details:

Ibrahim Dahy is a veteran internet marketer and programmer. He would love to share with you his experience that he gained over the past 10 years working with the top IM professionals in the field.

It’s Your Turn

I know just how busy you must be so many thanks for taking the time to leave your comments – both Ibrahim and myself will appreciate your feedback

As a beginner affiliate marketer which of the tips did you find most helpful?Are you having problems choosing a niche?Care to share if you’ve had any affiliate marketing trwaining before?What have been your biggest challenges or struggles as an affiliate marketer?What has really worked well for you as an affiliate marketer?What were the key things you got from this post?Would you like some help with your affiliate marketing?

I'm an Aussie entrepreneur who lives and runs his online sales & marketing coaching business from a remote Thai village.
I help small businesses to build authority, attract quality leads and generate sales
If you enjoyed your visit with me then SUBSCRIBE TO MY TRIBE where you will get lots of tips, ideas and practical, down-to-earth information about how to make the most of your online business journey.

Affiliate Marketing Course sounds like a great course. I’m currently using affiliate marketing to make a little bit on my blog and it’s working. However, it seems like the number one thing holding me back from making tons of dough is traffic. Traffic is what really drives converting clicks into sales, am I right? I might just have to invest in this course. Thanks for all your hard work, Michelle!Travis Knoll recently posted…Parting Thoughts on Habits

From My stand of point to be successful in affiliate marketing you must answer to yourself: Do you know anything well enough to write about it? Do you have a passion for content? Are you a decent writer (not great, but decent)? Can you write fast with great content?
Otherwise your Affiliate marketing work is just waste of time!

You make a very valid point about having a passion for the content you’re writing.
To be an effective affiliate marketer does not require great writing skills but it certainly does require authenticity and honesty.
By simply sharing with your readers the reality of the situation you’ll more than likely win fans. People love to hear the “real story” and not all the hype that’s usually associated with affiliate marketing.

To me the key is to NOT sell products, but rather sell concepts.

By the way, if writing is an issue why not try a simple video approach – maybe even more effective than the written version.

Hi Peter
Thanks for shareing these helpful tips on affilliate marketing. I join your mailing list and I can’t wait to hear more tips to affiliate marketing thank you again for sharing this helpful info.

Hi,
I would say it’s awesome post of you and the way you explained about to affiliate marketing was pretty impressive. Please keep writing and your Article motivates all of us.
Thanks for sharing this necessary and fabulous post.Chiro recently posted…Riven Counter : How To Counter Riven?

What a great article! I made many mistakes in the beginning. Always trying to be everywhere at once. You know, it takes more time sharing and being on social media than it does blogging and managing your blog? Oy vey! I finally gave up and focused on my best traffic generators, Facebook and Twitter. Although, I do play a bit with Instagram and Pinterest, I don’t focus there at all. People need to quit trying to do it all and focus on a few.

I appreciate you sharing this with us. Passing it along. Happy Monday!

Hi,
Great post, I found it very informative. In my opinion self learning is better because once you learn something by doing it, you’ll probably never forget it. Nevertheless Thank you for sharing your insights.

I loved the post very much, especially the part where you have told us about gathering traffic on the website, Sir am sure it will definitely help me, am an astrologer by profession and am a beginner and i am working on my own website named Maulana786 . I was trying to make it popular among people, but i wasnt able to, but now i’m sure i will be able to make it popular. Also pay per click was something i wasn’t aware of , i have googled it after reading your post and am sure that am gonna start working with it too. Thanks for the post.

Hi, Peter and Thank you very much for sharing this Awesome Article. I’ve noted some points of your article, and that will help me out how to Affiliate market.
Great article Sir!!chiranjit recently posted…How to Fix ‘err_name_not_resolved’ Error in Windows

That’s great that my article helped you.
And I hope you found your affiliate marketing course.
If you need any help on any topic in affiliate marketing let me know and I will post an article on it here.

Hey Peter,
I love the truth in your writings as they always reflect the kind of guy you are. I love that you are not trying to sell to people something they don’t need.
Wow a great amount of info here for any newbies and such honest info too.

One of these days Peter Beckenham is going to make his own courses because I think he is ‘da bomb’ on teaching this stuff.

I myself have finally found my niche as it has only taken me 18months to work that out, but that is all good since we are always learning.
I like how you laid it out to people in the sense that you either have to become an affiliate(which is a good recommendation for a newbie) or you work it out from scratch.

I agree with you that there is definitely enough info now to not need to do a course as such, but to have a mentor and learn how things are done is a great experience. I don’t know if I would be where I am today without becoming an affiliate first.

I like how you covered both sides ….great post as usual Pete……Jennifer

Thank you for the very klind words but you must realize that this excellent post was created by Ibrahim and not me!

I”m delighted to have given him the opportunity to share his expertise and hopefully help lots of beginner affiliate marketers get going online.

I’m sure Ibrahim will greatly appreciate the awesome feedback you have given here Jennifer.

And yes I will definitely create my own official training program one day but it may not be on affiliate marketing – may just make it a rralistic look at how best to get stsarted online. Will keep in touch and let you know because I’d want you as my very first student!!!

Ha ha,
I thought that. I wasn’t sure if he had written it or not, I was a little confused. Well. well done to Ibrahim you did great job and sorry for my confusion…..going to put my head in the sand now….LOL, just kidding. I did scroll to make sure I was addressing the right person…..obviously didn’t look well enough.

Hi Jennifer
Ok now i am very upset :O
Hahaha just kidding 🙂 I really loved your comment, and thank you for the kind words and for giving such in-depth comment.

Kidding aside.I also think that Peter should start his own course and we can work together on it as I am a programmer too.
How Peter takes care of his blog is just so inspiring and motivational for me. I neglect my blog a lot 🙁

I am glad you finally found your niche. It doesn’t matter how long it took because the journey is what matters.
The longer your journey is the more experienced you become and I am happy that you liked my post.

Hi Sanjana
Well cool name my friend, I like it 🙂
I hope i provided enough depth in my comparisons that can be of a great help to you.
I love writing comparisons because it’s like getting 2 camps together and sharing what each camp think. It comes out as very beneficial to the neutrals.

Regarding Traffic. I prefer organic traffic – from content marketing and seo activities – as my foundation. Layer paid ads on top of the base. Don’t use paid ads for small ticket products, though. It will send you broke.

Actually I think the problem beginner marketers have with “big ticket items” is a lack of confidence plus they probably have not purchased and used the product themselves.

That’s why so many go for the lower priced affiliate offers. The crazy part is some of these big ticket items are exactly what the beginner marketer should be investing in re their skills and self-development.

Then they would be much better positioned to share their experiences with these high ticket products and be more confident is providing them as a relevant affiliate offer.

But I guess its a case of in the beginning, the newbie marketer not having enough money and not attaining enough experience quick enough and this can and will hold them back.

I truly believe all beginner marketers should focus on 1 or 2 key free traffic sources only and become a real expert in them. Forget paid traffic sources until you are seeing some dollars come through the affiliate marketing “income door”

Thank you Kim for sharing some tips 🙂
You know, i also a great fan of organic traffic from SEO.
It is very hard to know how to SEO and even harder to implement a working SEO plan. That’s why beginners need affiliate marketing courses to help them with that.
No alternative to that when it comes to SEO

Care to share with me what were the main tips you gained from this affiliatec marketing article? I’d love to know so we can create more of the same in the future – my reader’s interests and needs are the most important thing in my blogging.

Thanks again for your visit Muhammad and please don’t forget to lt me know what were the most valuable tips your got from this post. OK?

Indeed, one has to know many things in order to do affiliate marketing the right way. From choosing a niche, to writing a sales page..that works.. It is something that you don’t want to play hit and miss with.

I see too many affiliates out there who didn’t take a course, and it shows. Either we get blasted with a pushy post or worse…the person never writes for others. It takes a well balanced blog post and sales page to make it work.

I have, in the past taken courses on affiliate marketing and it does change one’s mindset. That’s where it all begins.

So thank you for this because in order to monetize, one can either waste time (which is money) and play the trial and error game for a long time. OR…take a course, put it into action and start monetizing.

Totally agree with you re the need for any affiliate marketer to at least have done some form of training in the subject. Sadly very few beginner affiliate marketers are aware of the urgent need to do this.

So many marketers fail simply becuase they do not understand the essentials of profitable affiliate marketing.

This was the reason I wanted Ibrshim to contribute and it’s also the main point that he was trying to get across to readers.

Donna its always great to have your valuable feedback as not only a master blogger but also as a very experienced affiliate marketer.

First sorry for the long absence but I have been really busy writing.
The mindset that an affiliate marketing course sets you into is very important. I agree with you on that Donna.

I think beginners need that mindset more than anything else when they are getting started, because having a “can do” attitude is very vital since affiliate marketing is a long journey.

And yes, taking an advice from your affiliate marketing course helps avoid the trial and error game like you said. It is always best to find a coach that have already tried and failed many times and gives you the path to success on a silver platter.

Being a semi literate, when it comes to implementing proven
affiliate marketing strategies and or tactics etc; thanks for
providing such an eye opening, detail account, of exactly what
it’s gonna take, in order to become an effective affiliate marketer!

I actually clicked through your link, to preview your course
and even watch a few of the videos!

And the course is really offering some incredibly simple, straight forward
marketing strategies, that truth told, can be applied effectively, on or offline!

It’s just matter of inexpensively testing,tweaking and customizing your
overall strategies! Thanks so much for sharing them!

Hi Mark
Am happy you liked the article and found it helpful.
What i really like is when you said that affiliate marketing is about “testing,tweaking,customization”.
This is very true especially in the case of running paid ads to promote your affiliate offer, as you cant just pour all your money on one strategy even if it is successful. You always have to improve your conversion rates and try new things.
Also this in the case of blogging (well, blogs that sell affiliate products).

You opinion on my course really makes my day 🙂 i tried to make the course as newbie friendly as possible, because when you are beginner affiliate, the smallest mistake can cost you big time. And any inexperience affiliate marketer could easily overlook many details that have substantial effect on his business.
Its a trap that not only newbie affiliates fall into, but also more experienced ones, since affiliate marketing is major field and hard to find someone that can cover all of its aspects.

Hi Ibrahim,
Good to see you here on Peter’s blog and thanks for sharing these valuable tips.
Affiliate Marketing is exciting and I do it with a lot of excitement, having also written an ebook (85 pages) sharing my experiences and teaching bloggers how to do it.

Your first tip is the door into success. If you miss the niche, you end up messing up with everything else.

You are very correct about taking a course. I know there is a lot of information online for free but for the most part, this leads to information overload which will only get the student overwhelmed and confused.

I have mentioned a couple of time that get coached or joining a well organized training program is the best way forward. It may come with a fee but that’s the way to avoid losses, being scammed and discouragement.

I’d like to check your affset.com and probably promote it as affiliate.

I’m sure Ibrahim will add his own comments here as well but youknow me – I always love to engage with my readers.

The point you made re a training program for new affiliate marketers (and not so new as well I should add) I totally agree with. There is just so much information out there online andn what to believe and implement is a huge chalenge for most people getting started online.

People will always gravitate towards others who they can relate with and learn to trust. This is a key aspect of the decision re any coaching, mentoring and/or organised affiliate marketing training.

I’ll leave you and Ibrahim to discuss the link opportunities yourselves.

Totally agree with you Enstine, and am glad you find my post helpful.
I just visited your blog and you seem to be of great experience, Peter described you as “top blogger”.
I myself learned that niche finding is very vital the hard way.
I launched an ebook on weight gain without doing the appropriate niche research, and i found myself after 6 month of hard work and getting my site #1 in google for “gain weight” that the niche is “free” meaning people are looking for free tips, i should have segmented the niche and created a muscle building product…But you learn your lessons. the product is off the market because of this mistake.

Hi Ibrahim,
Yes Enstine Muki is a really top class blogger and one of the most genuine individuals you’ll ever come across online.

The story you shared about your ebook, the lack of niche research and the resultant failure was something every blogger and marketer online shuld be aware of. Many thanks for this truly honest share as its a great lesson for all of us.

Fortunatley affiliate marketing, if done correctly, can avoid many of these mistakes associated with product creation, but it will still be essential for any affiliate marketer to do their own market research.

Affiliate marketers MUST be able to very clearly identify their target audience’s major needs and challenges. After all that’s the source of thewir future blog posts as well as ensuring that any affiliate offers they have are fully aligned with their target audience.

For example there’s no point in promoting tropical island cruises to an audience who dislikes hot climates or the very fact of travelling on a ship.

Thanks for your kind words and I know Ibrahim will appreciate what you have shared here.

Robin I’d love to know what in particular you found really helpful from the post? If you could share this with us then we’d know more about what to create about affiliate marketing next time we posted.

Many thanks if you could do that for me Robin – very much appreciated.

I am glad you find the article helpful Robin. And stay tunned as i will be writing more posts for Peter.
Do you have any recommendation on what i can write? may be something you want to know more about.

I started my online career trying to produce my own product, but that was such an unrealistic option for me at the time – even with the coaching I took (at enormous expense) – because I needed to learn so many other skills to get the product online that I neglected the “get traffic” bit. It wasn’t so much “neglected”, as that I was completely overwhelmed by the “create product” side of the coaching and burned out by the time I had created the product.

It was a complete flop and a waste of money and time, because actually there were such great products out there already that I could market on an affiliate basis I would have been better just learning to generate traffic to an affiliate offer instead.

Even with that insight I still made every mistake possible before I decided to get proper affiliate marketing training – which is now much more affordable than when I started out. I know I still have a lot to learn, but I can concentrate on the important skill of traffic generation rather than product creation.

Perhaps one day I may be “moved” to create my own product again but I prefer affiliate marketing and encourage newcomers to take proper training from the outset instead of trying to learn it themselves – there are just too many pitfalls that only someone who has “been there” can point out, without you finding out the hard way.

You make an interesting point about product creation. Yes for sure there is a lot of money to be made with product creation and the resulting email lists you create automatically position you as the authority – the expert. This is indeed very powerful marketing potential.

However, as you so rightly pointed out from your own experience, there is just so much else to learn in order to have successful product launches.

For beginner marketers I would not recommend going down the product creator route.

Affiliate marketing if done correctly, can provide you with a very good income. The focus must be on doing your affiliate marketing “correctly” and this implies you look very seriously at the affiliate training options that are now available online. In fact our guest poster, Ibrahim has created one such affiliate training course.

Regular readers of my blog know that affiliate marketing is my recommended way to get started online and I strongly support getting trained properly in affiliate marketing rather than trying to teach yourself – way too many things can go wrong if you try to “do it yourself” just to save a few dollars.

Many thanks as always for your awesome feedback Joy – very much appreciated.

Hi Joy
I am glad you like the article, Peter here did a great job presenting it.

Well, Its a good thing that you now switched your attention to learning how to get traffic because this way if you decided to launch your own product you will have so much experience and will more likely to succeed.

For me, i went through what you did. It took me year and half to build my first product online (software) and then another 6 month before i started seeing traffic coming to it.
I was overwhelming with the tons of skills that was required to launch a product let alone a software.
But knowing how to get traffic before you create your product is such relief.
So good luck, you are on the right track!

Really good to have you here for your comments as your post has so many valuable tips.

It’s great to be able to have you also replying to people’s comments on your article.

Like you I went through a very challenging time to get my first product up and going. To be brutally honest with you, the affiliate marketing strategy is just so much easier to do, especially for beginner marketers.

Re traffic – this is the name of the game that’s form sure but it’s not that difficult to get. The key thing is to get traffic that is targeted and interested in what you have to offer or share. Far too often we can get traffic from places like solo ads and they never even open our emails!